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The police findings are alarming, but also show that effective action is being taken.

Millions of Australians entrust their children to the care of others. They often do so not because they know these people well but because they trust the institutions that employ them - as teachers, child-care workers, doctors, police, clergy and so on. Each time that trust is betrayed the effect is devastating. How then is the community to respond when such people are among about 200 people charged with child pornography offences, with as many as 700 being investigated?

Alarm and outrage are understandable. What must be avoided is hysteria. The evil nature of child pornography, and its pervasiveness on the internet, challenges our sense of perspective. But Australia has not been overrun by perverts; the overwhelming majority of those who work with and care for children are good people acting on good motives. They do not deserve to come under collective suspicion. Such suspicion alone can deter suitable people from working with children - male primary school teachers, for instance.

Even when accusations are wrong, the accused person may feel they have been tainted forever. The shame of such offences is so great that four men under investigation have committed suicide. Police acknowledge a need to review their handling of such cases, not least because the assumption of innocence must be upheld until a court can judge the evidence put before it.

As a nationally and internationally co-ordinated police investigation, Operation Auxin represents progress in the fight against child pornography and abuse. The mass arrests need not undermine public confidence in the protection of children. In fact, Victoria Police say they have yet to establish whether any of the pornographic material was produced locally. Victoria, in particular, has implemented stringent checks for people who work with children and has one of the nation's toughest penalty regimes.

There are still problems with Australia's lack of legislative uniformity and the laxity of some states' laws - many of the men charged are previous offenders who were undeterred by non-custodial penalties. The law in general has been slow to catch up with the dark side of the internet. Federal prohibitions on importing child pornography over the internet, backed by long jail penalties, come into effect only next February. As for screening of people who work with children, current measures will have to be reviewed against the police findings.

We must learn from the cases of those who have evaded detection until now. Parents need to be able to trust the people and institutions that care for their children, without this trust being naive. Such trust must be built on the knowledge that rigorous safeguards and screening measures are in place and that offenders will be detected, prosecuted and properly penalised. In the past, a culture of denial often served to protect pedophiles. The continuing police operation should be seen as reassurance that authorities are weeding out the deviant predators in our midst.